


And so will I

by MaybeMagpies



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Awkward Yasha (Critical Role), Background Relationships, Backstory, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Language of Flowers, Non-Linear Narrative, flower symbolism? tying in character traits to properties of flowers? more likely than you think, just throwing as much symbolism and tidbits as I can at a wall until it gives me sarah toe nines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaybeMagpies/pseuds/MaybeMagpies
Summary: Flowers, Yasha finds, are awfully personal things. Weeds and wildflowers, bouquets and blooms - they grow in all sorts of places, mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. Toxins and tales, stories and symbolism - and memories, most of all.She nestles these in her book, too.--Ch1 - Caleb, Valerian“What were these like? Were they different, tamed?”Yasha thumbed the flowers, so slowly, as to not tear off the petals. She’d asked in Celestial - it felt right to change the tone to something lighter.Caleb blinked, studied the flowers in thought.“Ah, no - flowers are not quite like pedigree cats - more like people. Barring the uppity rich sort, the garden and the grove have the same ilk. Just more unkept.”
Relationships: Caleb Widogast & Yasha
Comments: 9
Kudos: 36





	And so will I

“Is this what you were looking for?”

Caleb looked down, not needing to crouch (this unlike Yasha, who was bent in half to point out her find). He peered at the delicate ornament, its weight enough to pull the leaf downward, ever so slightly. The mist had beaded into dew on it, making the pearlescent green structure look like a gem.

He shook his head. “Ah, no- that’s a chrysalis. My magic - Polymorph - requires a silk cocoon, the kind moth caterpillars make.” He patted her shoulder. “It’s a good sign - hopefully, the right sorts frequent these plants, too.”

Humming under her breath, Yasha unfurled, careful to push the leaves to one side as she did so. With careful steps, she made her way to the next clump of plants and sank again, using a finger to lift a leaf. Caleb, after admiring the chrysalis, joined her, keen eyes methodical in their search for their prize.

They were looking for. Well. Silk cocoons - Caleb’s last had been torn to pieces by claws that had nearly done the same to him. With the fog not letting up under tentative sun and the Nein’s past experience with marshy terrain, he wanted the security of Polymorph handy for whatever they’d face. 

(That’s what Yasha made of it, at least, when Caleb explained it in twice as many words.)

Yasha, personally, thought that if _she_ was a moth, this would be a great spot for caterpillars and their subsequent silk sleeping bags. Here, the marsh hadn’t begun in earnest, with a few stubborn trees shading the side of the road and now their wagon. A mess of wildflowers and grasses claimed what the road didn’t. In the patchy sunlight, she could almost forget the stink of dried mud on her boots reminding her a little too much of home. 

She admired the plants Caleb had directed her towards: waist-tall and towering, spindly, above their neighbors. (Not above _her_ , though.) Buds of soft pink and white were clustered together in handfuls, looking for all the world like bouquets of their own.

This was the first time in some days she’d seen flowers, come to think of it. They probably liked the sunlight too.

Zuala’s book had been left with her pack, underneath Jester’s and Beau’s and Caduceus’, in the cart. She’d need to hold them for a while, delicately, _carefully_ , before finding a spot for them between the pages.

If she was careful, she wouldn’t break the trembling stems. If she was _really_ careful, the tiny starbursts of petals would remain undisturbed.

Yasha clearly remembered the first time she’d picked flowers. Well. Had them picked for her- she wasn’t quite sure how to pry them from the plant without maiming them at first. 

She’d hesitated, surrounded by crumpled leaves, by that field as tents were drawn up around her. Hesitated long enough for someone to notice.

(He’d laughed it off, traded a book to keep them in for a reminder on how to shave. Pointed out a four-leafed clover pressed gently between the last pages. “For whoever needs them from you.”)

Yasha snapped the stem. 

(She… didn’t really want to remember it, anymore.)

A blur of orange distracted her - from the clouds of white flowers and the tears in her eyes. 

Frumpkin was looking exceptionally catlike today. His eyes were the right shade of blue, his paws the right size, his fur wasn’t whispering off his shoulders. 

(As a fae, he’d occasionally take liberties with his form, in those lazy moments in the sunlight or purring in someone’s arms. Yasha noticed. It was easy to, given how often she scooped him up and petted him, gently.)

What was also exceptionally catlike about him was the rolling purr that drifted from his chest. He bumped against Yasha’s open hand, sniffed- then leaned his full weight against the plant.

“I - no, Frumpkin, _no_ .” Yasha dabbed at her eyes, then pulled him towards her with a hand - he slunk out and under her grasp. With a delighted _mrrp_ the fae almost rolled into it, leaves pulled free and the stem slumping towards the ground.

Yasha sat back on the damp swamp grass and moss, bemused, as Frumpkin rolled and rolled and rolled. Head first, headbutting the poor plant before curling and stretching and rolling again.

Well. So much for those flowers.

She sighed and placed a hand in the wet, to haul herself to her feet.

“My cat used to love these, too.”

Caleb was beside her, watching Frumpkin with a peculiar expression. 

“Isn’t - isn’t he, you know. Your cat?” She gestured at the wriggling feline- Frumpkin reached out and pulled more of the plant to his face, chewing on it with bared teeth.

Yasha watched as he brushed aside some of the dew, a curl of steam hinting that his magics were at work. He settled beside her, meeting her eyes with a little smile. 

“Oh, ja- but his predecessor, his muse. A real cat that doesn’t go _poof_ when a weasel has at it.” 

Frumpkin, lost in bliss, continued to mewl and chirp before them. The plant was flattened, now.

Caleb’s smile crinkled. “It makes them a little batty- a little euphoric. Like catmint.” 

“How do you know that?” Yasha asked. “Is it another component? Like the cocoons?”

She was still for a moment, then grinned.

“Caleb’s Catnip High. You smush a little bit of this, light it up - make a whole bunch of monsters go like this.” Yasha gestured at the absolutely blitzed familiar.

(Yasha wasn’t good at jokes. She knew this - even Veth and Beau would leave a beat, always a beat, because her tone wasn’t quite _right_ and she wasn’t - she didn’t know. But she _wasn’t.)_

But Caleb’s eyes twinkled with laughter, and she knew he got it. 

“A good name for a spell.” Caleb nodded, a little chuff. “But not quite. _Baldrian_ , my father called it.”

He leaned forward, probably to pet Frumpkin - pulled his hand away with a chuckle when the fae lunged for it. Yasha didn’t know cats well, but with the wild eyes and perked ears he looked like a playful moorbounder. 

“We had some in our garden, when I was small,” he continued.

“My father tended to the fields, to the _gerste_ \- to the barley; my mother to our vegetable garden outside of sowing and reaping. I learned to help with both as I grew. Necessity, you know. But the flower bed, ah, that was their second love.”

She extended her own hand, reaching to pat Caleb’s arm. Changed her mind and reached for Frumpkin instead. He batted at her knuckles, his claws light pinpricks in her skin. Real and here. 

“The flowers they nurtured - not so much for any use, really, though my _mutter_ could make a salve or spices or a quick remedy with some. Just to make something beautiful and see it bloom.” 

He chuckled, playing with a blade of grass. “They got rid of a lot of them when I was born. Toxic, you know, not good for little babies. They got rid of more when we got our cat, ones toxic to _him_ \- but the _baldrian_ made up for the lost space.”

She risked a glance at Caleb. He was a rare sort of soft she hadn’t seen him, often. Like when he looked at Jester and Veth doing something ridiculous, when in quiet conversation with Fjord - or Essek. Like his worries hadn’t caught up to him in this moment, his quick mind flying free of his bonds.

It reminded her of her dream. _Dreams_ , now.

With a pang, Yasha - Yasha didn’t quite know what to do, just anything to put wind in his sails and keep that melancholy from catching up. 

“We didn’t have flowers, in- in my tribe.” She faltered. “You know that. But we did some things just for a little color, a little joy.”

She tapped at her chin with her free hand, careful not to smudge the paint. “This- this was mostly like that.”

Yasha smiled softly. “We’d spend a lot of time, between hunting and foraging and being, just. _Grinding_ up paints. Mixing pigments, you know. Hours and hours, so we could make eachother something more than the land. Look a little more alive than grey.”

She gestured broadly, earning a swat or two from Frumpkin (they were lazy taps, now). 

It _meant_ something, too, but she wouldn’t say that in this heavy air. They were meanings only for her old tribe - you could tell a lot of a person by daring to look them in the eye and read what was around their gaze. Meant things about being alive - about being grown, about having survived. 

(About being married - but not anymore.)

“We’d mix ash and clay and ochres - squish these little bugs or snails for color. A nice pop of it. Make mush out of some plants too.”

It was a secret sort of art, one Zuala was practiced at. She could take a few plain facets of life they never thought twice about - make them into rich purples and blues and reds with the work of her hands. It was beautiful - so much more beautiful than what Yasha could make with a sword. Even more beautiful when she painted her creation with gentle fingers, murmuring what it meant. 

(Sometimes Yasha wondered if it was Zuala’s touch, feather-light on her chin, that taught her to be gentle and fearsome in turn. Anything, to feel that again.)

A thought touched at her, like a hand on a shoulder.

“Is that how your magic works?” Yasha asked. “You take something - and squish it or rub it, let it let out its color? But that color is magic.”

Caleb thought on it for a moment. “I think it is more like - they are the ingredients. My hands, what they _do,_ they are your mortar and pestle. And the voice or formulae behind it, that is the painting, I suppose.” He mimed drawing war paint on his face, two dirty fingers just under his eyes.

“We actually had a few scotch elms just past the garden. They’re also called wychwood.” His eyes gleamed. “I used their twigs to cast Dancing Lights, the first time - oh how _mutter_ had a fright!”

They lapsed into silence, then. Well. Not quite silence - Yasha could hear Frumpkin’s purring, chirping crickets, the rustle of their clothes and armor as they breathed. The heavy _plop_ of a disturbed frog, Veth cussing after it as it escaped. 

Yasha got to picking more flowers, more _baldrian_ , from where they sat. Listened for the faint snap of the stem, the sigh of leaves brushing against eachother, the hymn of grass as her weight shifted. 

She could hear it all - just muffled by this stagnant fog. Clinging to them and the ground like a cloak.

It was heavy - she felt heavy, too, when she saw Caleb’s eyes again.

Sad. Again. Not the blue sheen as he set about a problem, or contributed his own humor to Jester’s bouts. Even the glazed over ice when faced with his demons - a look Yasha was familiar with. This was just… dead? No. Desaturated? No - _drowning_.

Yasha was, to tell the truth, a little bit angry. 

It took her a moment to figure out why.

Not the cold-hot rage that burned and chilled her veins all at once - gods, no. 

Just - frustrated. 

She knew which shackles found him, again and again. They were easy to spot - same ones dragging her down, too. Restraints of their own make, to keep the world from their harm. To hold them back.

These chains did not fit them. She knew, on a few levels - it was hard, so hard, to try and see it. Harder still to act accordingly, to shrug them off. It felt almost safer to just - stay shackled and not have to face the prospect of deserving more.

They were of their own make - but it was not their place to bear their burden. Ikithon’s wrists and Obann’s hands were the ones to chain. It was their fate to drown.

It took Caleb, and the Stormlord, and a little from everyone in the Mighty Nein for Yasha to get it. To pull free of the cold iron, embrace the static cold of stormclouds instead. 

But Caleb… he just kept going back. Melting the key presented. Like he didn’t deserve to burn to warm, only burn to consume himself.

He just… needed a little more time, she thought. She hoped. 

(At least, all this metaphor was the best way Yasha could make sense of it - the guilt she shouldered sure did feel like manacles. Locked not on her arms, but heavy on her shoulders. Right where her wings would bloom out.)

It was heavy and it was tiring and Yasha… Yasha wasn’t too sure what to do about it.

The quiet had settled, now - also heavy, like dark cloudbanks heavy with rain. She risked a glance at Caleb - the storm clouds were reflected there, too, choking the light in his eyes.

So she did not say _‘you asked me, once, how to do this social thing. And now, I’m telling you that you deserve it, all of this, all of us. That’s how you do the social thing.’_

She did not say _‘I know it won’t erase what you have done, but maybe pulling Ikithon’s arms off like Obann’s wings will help._ I’ll _help. Let us help.’_

She did not say _‘I killed my family, I’ll throw you under a bridge - you know. We’ve all been there.’_

Instead:

_“What were these like? Were they different, tamed?_ ” 

Yasha thumbed the flowers, so slowly, as to not tear off the petals. She’d asked in Celestial - it felt right to change the tone to something lighter.

Caleb blinked, studied the flowers in thought. Tapped the ground a few times, enough to get Frumpkin to roll closer. His hand sunk into the ginger fur, looking keenly like it did when he charged a Fireball. 

_“Ah, no - flowers are not quite like pedigree cats - more like people. Barring the uppity rich sort, the garden and the grove have the same ilk. Just more unkept.”_ He responded in kind - his accent still very much _there_ , just turned into more of a song than a rasp.

He seemed to draw strength from his familiar. Not quite smiling, but not as downtrodden, either. Good.

_“They planted the_ baldrian _after I got Frumpkin, the real one. Our neighbors, with a ploughing team and a barn for them - their best mouser rejected her litter._ Mutter _offered to raise them, less mice in the grain was good for all of us. We kept the one - the others were black and orange like the molly, or black and white, but he was a little firebrand.”_

_Like you_ , Yasha added privately. 

_"Was he a good hunter, like his mom?"_ Yasha added, loudly. She half expected to spook the cat, but he merely slumped over. Must be a nice high.

Caleb snorted. 

"No,” he said, in Common. “He was lazy, not very bright. I'd seen him sit on a mouse and wail, looking for it."

"He made for a good friend, for a little boy. Had a lot of time for me and my whispering and my pats, that other cats never did."

Yasha chuckled, gently spun the head of flowers - of baldrian - she'd taken.

"That explains how, ah... perceptive, he is. This one, I mean." 

“He’s a fae - I’m sure it’s some kind of fun for him. A joke. He’ll keep the promises we made, our pact, but if given the opportunity to make things _interesting_ , well-” Caleb stopped himself, rubbed a hand from his brows down his cheeks to drag at the stubble of his chin. Sighed.

She knew they both thought of another fae they knew. (She didn’t really like _him_ , either.)

She palmed the flowers into her lap and reached for another, twisting the pale stem between her fingers to snap - 

“Ah.”

There - cradled against where a trio of stems met. A tiny, perfect silk cocoon. 

She made to offer it to Caleb. Frumpkin, with a chirp, made to steal the fragrant plant, so she ended up almost punching him in the face with it to avoid the greedy paws. 

“Oops, sorry, but - Caleb! Look, here-”

Yasha suspected it took a moment for his eyes to focus on the object of their search. There was a pause, between almost getting socked with a flower to his bright grin. 

“It’s little, but it will do.” He took it between careful fingers, spinning the flower round and watching the cocoon twirl about it. It looked so much larger than the chrysalis they had found, earlier - the caterpillar must be cozy, wrapped so snugly. 

“I wonder what it would have become,” Yasha mused. “If it had a little more time. What sort of beautiful thing would come out. If it had a little more time, you know?”

“I try not to think about it, ja.” Caleb sounded just a little sad. “Given our track record - I doubt it will live long enough to emerge.”

Caleb, fixated on their prize, did not see that she was watching him instead.

Just a little more _time_.

\---

Later, when they were bundled in the cart, the fog dispelling before them as the day broke in earnest, she went over her finds.

She took a sprig or two from the plant Frumpkin had demolished. Ruffled - nah. Ruffled was generous. The petals were creased like clothes thrown in a travelling bag, broken in places. 

Ginger hairs, glinting like fire among the petals, were a token to what caused the damage.

She decided she liked this one most of all, and tucked it beside Molly’s four leafed clover.

  
  
  


\---

(And, for the record, the moth did survive. Unveiling its wings one warm evening by the fire, unnoticed amidst the chatter until Jester pointed it out with delight.)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay hear me out - flower symbolism AND other properties of the plants AND Yasha AND character study. I will take no criticism. 
> 
> No solid plot, I don't think. I'm tired and busy and just want to poke at the M9 and include backstory headcanons and worldbuilding and maybe slide in some science (fun fact! Caleb's og Frumpkin and his litter are perfectly feasible; the father[s] is likely a black tom with white).
> 
> In this case - Caleb got valerian, a flower known for use in some herbal medicine as well as being a fairly pretty garden flower. Oh, and it produces catnip-like effects on cats - making it a perfect fit for Caleb in my eyes. Though he refers to it as baldrian, its German name. I really enjoy the friendship between these two, and thought this would be the right pair to start with.
> 
> I'm an honors STEM student, so updates may or may not be a thing - but I have pretty solid ideas for all the chapters I want to do, so fingers crossed.


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